Insta360 Luna Ultra Vs. DJI Pocket 4: My Complete Footage Comparison

Okay, this is your complete footage comparison between the DJI Pocket 4 and the Insta360 Luna Ultra, which may seem like a weird comparison because one is going to be more expensive than the other. One has dual lenses, one does not, but this has been a weird season when it comes to camera releases. Both of these companies have been battling it out trying to one-up each other in terms of their information. At this point, the DJI Pocket 4 Pro doesn’t sound like it’s going to announce for at least another month or so. Thus, I’m going to give you that weird comparison anyways until we can go ahead and compare both of these side by side.

Now, note that neither of these two companies has sponsored this video. I don’t care what you buy, but it should be noted there’s a lot of weird things going on in the space between these two companies in terms of how they sponsor videos. In the case of Insta360, they sent me this loaner unit to try out. In the case of DJI, I bought this Pocket 4. That said, DJI has been trying to pay me off to go to a Pocket 4 Pro event where they say I won’t be able to talk about comparisons or do comparisons like this video right here. Keep that in mind when you start seeing some of those influencer event videos coming out from places like Cancun and Toronto where they wanted me to go.

Default Settings, Real-World Exposure

For this video, I just simply kept it simple. I’m going to show you a whole bunch of footage and give you my thoughts as I’m doing so. For example, right away looking at the Pocket 4 footage, it looks really overexposed. I’ve got essentially all the default settings on it right now — I do have high bit rate set — versus the Insta360 video, which looks properly exposed. At some point I’ll do a full comparison between these two cameras. I wasn’t exactly expecting to have to drop this video today, so I’ve shortened up just the footage side, because they’re of course quite different cameras from a functional standpoint. One has dual lenses, one has a removable remote, one will cost less, and so on down the list.

If I back up a little bit more, you can see how things compare in a wider shot where the yellow is so dominant in the frame, as it is in those close-up shots. Now, if you’ve watched one of my videos, you’ve likely seen me sitting right here — I am technically outside under a shed-like thing. Just to talk about the images as I’m seeing them on the cameras themselves, looking at the Insta360 one, I think it looks a little bit more fluorescent, a little bit brighter, orangey, contrasty, whatever you want to call it, than reality. In the case of the DJI, it looks a little bit more pale than it actually is in reality. At my face itself, I would say DJI is doing me some favors and smoothing some things out. The beauty filter is not on here at all. It’s just the default settings across the board in that 4K 30 setting at the 1x lens.

Back on those bikes, I think Insta360 is doing a better job of making that red bike pop a little bit, but maybe I’m just biased towards making some of those things pop. And that’s one of the things to keep in mind when you’re looking at these cameras: there’s a difference between the true colors and the colors that look better to the eye in a brief moment on Instagram or social media. Most people will skew towards more pop, more color, and things like that, even when that’s not correct. There’s no better way of seeing that than going underwater with the action cameras between the DJI, Insta360, and GoPro cameras and seeing that the GoPro tends to be truer, but DJI and Insta360 make a more pleasing look at that underwater footage, because they basically nullify out all the imperfections and make it look like some sort of perfect National Geographic film. But that’s not always what reality actually looks like.

In The Vehicle And Out The Window

Okay, here we are in the vehicle using of course the gimbal and just pointing at my wife. In this case, I don’t see a huge difference between the two of them, to be honest. The beautify filter is off for this one. So, this is again just standard issue stuff. I’m going to rotate towards the road in just a second. There we go. Both seem to be reacting fairly well. It took both going inside and outside. Though, keep in mind the roof is off here — the majority of it has like a sunscreen sort of thing there. I would say maybe a little bit more preference for me to the colors on the Insta360 in terms of her face, and maybe some of the outside stuff has a little more contrast to it, but overall I’m not seeing a big difference here.

I put the two cameras on the outside of the window. It’s about 60 km/h for the wind there. No issues with the gimbal. I am noticing the focus does seem to shift on both of them a little bit between the antenna and the outside, which I guess is natural. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it is kind of a nice little test to see there. But no issues with the gimbal in terms of the wind at this speed. There would probably be at higher speeds though.

That 3x Telephoto Lens Makes A Difference

Next, looking at that 3x lens. This is a secondary lens on the Insta360. And you can definitely see the difference there compared to basically just the cropped zoom on the Pocket 4 non-Pro edition. It looks way, way, way better on the Luna Ultra. Also, the Pocket 4 is again blowing things out quite a bit here.

These Are Not Action Cameras

So what about running, in terms of gimbal stability? Generally speaking, running is all right on these sorts of things. You can usually do it for a while, but if you get some sort of big bump or things like that, that’s where you might have problems where the gimbal will bounce off. But these aren’t action cameras. That’s something that many people kind of confuse. For example, these cameras are definitely not waterproof in any way, shape, or form. They are barely rainproof, like a light rain. The general rule of thumb I have between an action camera and a gimbal camera is essentially: if I were to drop it right now, is that camera likely to be dead? In the case of these two things, strong chance. I have dropped my Pocket 3 while cycling at 25 mph and it’s been fine. If I can drop the camera in the water and it dies, it’s not an action camera.

Focus Lock: DJI Just Works

Now, one of the things I often do in my videos is to hold an object that I’m reviewing up in front of the camera at the same exact distance in the same exact spot. I do this one camera at a time because I want to put it directly in front of the camera lens. So, in this case, I’m going to put this up in front of the camera lens and it instantly locks that focus on that. You can see my face is still visible here. Even off to the side, it’s still visible. It’s not changing to my face.

Now, I’ll do the same thing over on the Insta360. And it locked that pretty quickly right there. But it’s losing focus tracking on that object and going to my face. Once my face is out of the way, it goes back to the object. But the moment my face peeks in there, it goes back to my face, despite the fact that I have no face tracking or anything like that turned on. This is where I wish it did a better job of seeing what’s in that foreground. So that is one annoyance. Maybe there’s some setting I could tweak better, but out of the box, using all the default settings, it just works on DJI, and it doesn’t seem to work as well in the case of the Insta360.

12x Vs. 4x: The Maximum Zoom Showdown

Just so we’re clear, this is what the maximum zoom looks like on both of them: 12x in the case of Insta360 and 4x in the case of the DJI. It is nuts to see them placed exactly next to each other. This is absolutely crazy.

I do a lot of product shots, of course, in my reviews. This is a good example here. I’m holding it basically just elbow length — I’m sitting right behind the camera and just holding it right in front of the camera — and no problems from a minimum focusing distance on that 3x lens. So that zoom lens there on the Insta360 is looking a little bit more crispy than the DJI lens. Now, as I noted, sometimes I prefer one versus the other from a color standpoint. In this case, the Pocket 4 colors are definitely looking a little bit nicer than the Insta360, and they are more true to life. The Luna Ultra seems to have a little bit of a haze going on right there. I’m going to crop in on this though. This is shot in 8K, by the way. So as I crop in on that, basically using the zoom on the unit itself — not doing anything in post-production — you can see it’s definitely clearer on the Luna Ultra because it’s got more resolution to pull in on.

In just a moment, I’m going to use the other lenses. In this case, this is the main lens for both of them. And I note 2.9x, because that’s the maximum it allows you to do on the Luna Ultra — I know it’s kind of strange in terms of that — before it jumps up to the other lens. Going down to the water briefly for a second, just to kind of show what things look like in the foreground versus the background, I don’t see a lot of difference between these two. They both look relatively similar to me in terms of what I saw out there and what you see on the display. Pretty close on both of these.

Meanwhile, using the secondary lens at the 4x zoom setting on both of them, you can see it is a heck of a lot more zoomed in and more clear on the Insta360, using that secondary lens that it has that the base Pocket 4 doesn’t have. Of course, in a Pocket 4 Pro configuration, it would probably look more similar to the Insta360. Now, going into the 12x zoom, you can see just how clear that is. I am like 300 meters away at this point. I am way, way far away from this. And it’s looking very, very clear, and that’s as far as I can go — on the Pocket 4 there’s nothing beyond 4x without simply cropping in post. But I wanted to show you this. It’s such a good example of where that secondary lens is really, really helpful.

Sunset And Low Light Mode

Next, a quick look at sunset. These were kind of blah, honestly, for both of them. I think the overall colors in the sky are closer on the Pocket 4. But then when we get to some of the trees, both of them look sort of weird. The Insta360 looks a little bit weird there. So does the DJI Pocket 4. This is in the low light mode, and again, just before sunset, kind of looking up towards the sun. It’s not like a normal thing you do, but again, there are many scenarios where you might do something that’s not super normal.

From here though, we’re going to go into some of the night stuff, again using that low light mode. These two look pretty similar to me. I don’t really have a big difference between these two across the board. Maybe a little bit too much white on the sand in the case of Insta360, but overall very, very close. Here I am on the bike going down the stretch. I think the colors are a little bit better on the Pocket 4 in terms of that slightly warmer tone that you see there. But again, these are very, very similar between the two of them. So, no main differences there — no major differences in terms of what I’m looking at on the camera or afterwards in the footage itself. Also, no issues here in terms of rotating this to the right or left, tracking being stable while I’m on the bike and moving through this area. No problems there.

Pulling Light Out Of Pitch Black

This next section though is probably my favorite, out onto this pier. Wait just a second as it goes dark and watch and see how quickly these adjust to that. The lighting ends at around about two seconds. There we go. And then it should be basically pitch black here. But both of these pull a lot of light that doesn’t exist. And that’s kind of one of the fun things, or funny things, however you want to look at it, of a lot of these low light modes: they are making it look way, way brighter than it really is in real life. That is basically pitch black out there. And then even here on the beach areas and whatnot, it’s way darker in real life. Yes, there’s light on the boardwalk, but it’s covering that area there as opposed to covering the entire beach. So this is where these cameras are just pulling light out that doesn’t exist and making that image look really appealing to the eye, but not necessarily what it looks like in reality.

Heading back here again, both these cameras were way overexposing this across the board. Again, it might look nice to you, but that’s definitely way overexposed in both scenarios. Once we get closer to the buildings, then things kind of normalize a little bit more.

Night Streets And Close-Up Talking Shots

From here we’re going to go onto the streets, and we’re going to follow this taxi for just a second and then bail off under some buildings and whatnot. You get some different coloring of lights there. So, here goes that churn. This all looks pretty similar to me. I mean, you can pick minor nits one way or the other, but this looks pretty good. I don’t really have any complaints on these sections. Both of them did a pretty good job, again using those base lenses on the main camera there.

Here I am talking to the camera, in this case just basically arm’s length away, to see how the coloring looks again in low light mode. Slower on the tilt on the DJI, but pretty similar overall. Now, one more dark section here. The coloring on this from a lighting standpoint is really in between these two. It is yellow, to be clear — that’s just kind of the lighting tone that the lights up here have. But it’s definitely in between these two. It’s not as yellowish as the Pocket 4 and not as pale as the Insta360.

I’m now about a meter away from the cameras on these two — basically almost one arm’s length away. And then here I am like two feet away, so two-thirds of a meter, again in low light mode. And now I’m like a foot away at best, so about a third of a meter away from it in low light mode. Backing out here, and again, one final wide shot before we wrap things up. Again, these are both simply wrong across the board. Reality is basically in the middle of these two, but it is neither of those two.

The Real Comparison Is Coming

With all the footage gone through, keep in mind there are so many features on these two cameras that make one better than the other. Also keep in mind it’s a weird comparison, because we’re talking dual lens versus single lens. Insta360 says their single-lens version is still some number of weeks or so away before they release that. And DJI officially isn’t saying anything, but unofficially it sounds like the July time frame for the release of the Pocket 4 Pro. At which point, I’ll do a proper comparison between both levels of those cameras as opposed to this weird one in between. Anyways, hope you liked it.

Be sure to check out more of my in-depth camera reviews and comparisons on the DC Rainmaker YouTube channel, and you can find more of my articles right here on DroneXL.